1. Technical Field of the Invention
The subject invention relates generally to diagnostic equipment for determining the quality of electromagnets and, more specifically, to diagnostic equipment for determining drop time for the armature of an electromagnetic actuator.
2. Art Discussion
In devices such as printers that are increasingly making use of electronic logic components, actuation decisions represented by electrical signals are often translated to mechanical motions by armatures driven by electromagnets. Where high speed operation is desired, electromagnet response characteristics become critical to correct operation, yet visual or tactile detection of out of specification performance is often impossible. Detection becomes especially difficult if a quality assessment is desired without removal from a larger mechanism, such as a printer.
To detect out of specification characteristics for electromagnetic actuators, it is known to use motion detectors relying on light beams or physical contact, but such detectors typically require removal of the actuator from a larger assembly. Measurement of the drive waveform for an electromagnet is known for determining drop time, but, typically, the overall waveform is either filtered to remove effects of oscillations or a point well beyond the oscillatory portion of the waveform is studied in detecting some measure of performance not directly correlated to drop time.